Judgments Of Certainty Research Articles

Evidential meanings in native and learner Japanese and English

Abstract Evidentiality is a linguistic category that comprises forms and meanings related to the source of information in utterances, the use of which may impact judgments about the degree of certainty expressed by a speaker. The main dichotomy is first-hand (direct) vs. second-hand (indirect) evidence. This distinction is grammaticalised in Japanese only, though certain related meanings can be expressed in English lexically or constructionally. The relevant forms in both languages also function as indirectness-for-politeness markers. We used a judgments elicitation task and found that statements with Japanese evidentials (both first- and second-hand) and with English markers of uncertainty lead to judgments of lower certainty than the statements without the evidential forms and meanings for the majority, but not for all speakers. In addition, monolingual and bilingual usage in both languages has parallels such that these two typologically distinct languages appear closer and certainty judgments by their speakers similar.

Relation between belief and performance in perceptual decision making.

In an uncertain and ambiguous world, effective decision making requires that subjects form and maintain a belief about the correctness of their choices, a process called meta-cognition. Prediction of future outcomes and self-monitoring are only effective if belief closely matches behavioral performance. Equality between belief and performance is also critical for experimentalists to gain insight into the subjects' belief by simply measuring their performance. Assuming that the decision maker holds the correct model of the world, one might indeed expect that belief and performance should go hand in hand. Unfortunately, we show here that this is rarely the case when performance is defined as the percentage of correct responses for a fixed stimulus, a standard definition in psychophysics. In this case, belief equals performance only for a very narrow family of tasks, whereas in others they will only be very weakly correlated. As we will see it is possible to restore this equality in specific circumstances but this remedy is only effective for a decision-maker, not for an experimenter. We furthermore show that belief and performance do not match when conditioned on task difficulty – as is common practice when plotting the psychometric curve – highlighting common pitfalls in previous neuroscience work. Finally, we demonstrate that miscalibration and the hard-easy effect observed in humans' and other animals' certainty judgments could be explained by a mismatch between the experimenter's and decision maker's expected distribution of task difficulties. These results have important implications for experimental design and are of relevance for theories that aim to unravel the nature of meta-cognition.

Where is the “meta” in animal metacognition?

Apes, dolphins, and some monkeys seem to have metacognitive abilities: They can accurately evaluate the likelihood that their response in cognitive task was (or will be) correct. These certainty judgments are seen as significant because they imply that animals can evaluate internal cognitive states, which may entail meaningful self-reflection. But little research has investigated what is being reflected upon: Researchers have assumed that when animals make metacognitive judgments they evaluate internal memory strength. Yet decades of research have demonstrated that humans cannot directly evaluate internal memory strength. Instead, they make certainty judgments by drawing inferences from cues they can evaluate, such as familiarity and ease of processing. It seems likely that animals do the same, but this hypothesis has not been tested. I suggest two strategies for investigating the internal cues that underlie animal metacognitive judgments. It is possible that animals, like humans, are capable of making certainty judgments based on internal cues without awareness or meaningful self-reflection.

Where is the skepticism in animal metacognition?

The comparative analysis of metacognition may answer fundamental questions about the evolution of cognition. Although a substantial amount of research has been directed toward this goal in the last two decades, the recent development of quantitative nonmetacognition models has raised questions about the existence of metacognition in nonhumans. Kornell (2014, pp. 143-149) proposes that advances in animal metacognition may be made by following emerging trends in human metacognition research, namely that animal metacognition may take the form of drawing inferences from metacognitive cues without directly assessing the strength of memories. A problem with this approach is noted. Because the metacognitive status of certainty judgments in animals is at the center of the dispute in the field, demonstrations of the inferential view would not provide evidence that putative metacognitive cues are indeed based on metacognition. I argue that any preparation that claims to tap into metacognition needs to be tested against leading nonmetacognition hypotheses such as Le Pelley's (2012) reinforcement-learning model. Progress in animal metacognition will come from the development of new assessment techniques that offer predictions contrary to nonmetacognition hypotheses. Animal metacognition will advance by applying skepticism about methods and interpretation while letting the animals (and their data) settle the debate.

“Jumping to conclusions” in delusion-prone participants: an experimental economics approach

IntroductionThat delusional and delusion-prone individuals “jump to conclusions” on probabilistic reasoning tasks is a key finding in cognitive neuropsychiatry. Here we focused on a less frequently investigated aspect of “jumping to conclusions” (JTC): certainty judgments. We incorporated rigorous procedures from experimental economics to eliminate potential confounds of miscomprehension and motivation and systematically investigated the effect of incentives on task performance.MethodsLow- and high-delusion-prone participants (n = 109) completed a series of computerised trials; on each trial, they were shown a black or a white fish, caught from one of the two lakes containing fish of both colours in complementary ratios. In the betting condition, participants were given £4 to distribute over the two lakes as they wished; in the control condition, participants simply provided an estimate of how probable each lake was. Deviations from Bayesian probabilities were investigated.ResultsWhereas high-delusion-prone participants in both the control and betting conditions underestimated the Bayesian probabilities (i.e. were conservative), low-delusion-prone participants in the control condition underestimated but those in the betting condition provided accurate estimates. In the control condition, there was a trend for high-delusion-prone participants to give higher estimates than low-delusion-prone participants, which is consistent with previous reports of “jumping to conclusions” in delusion-prone participants. However, our findings in the betting condition, where high-delusion-prone participants provided lower estimates than low-delusion-prone participants (who were accurate), are inconsistent with the jumping-to-conclusions effect in both a relative and an absolute sense.ConclusionsOur findings highlight the key role of task incentives and underscore the importance of comparing the responses of delusion-prone participants to an objective rational standard as well as to the responses of non-delusion-prone participants.

Acceptable risk and social values: struggling with uncertainty in Australian water allocation

While people support long term sustainability and intergenerational equity in water allocation in Australia it is hard to get agreement on how that should be achieved especially when water is taken away from some users and either given to others or to the environment. Governments hope that this difficulty will be alleviated by uncertainties being dealt with by improved science and evidence based decision making. This paper suggests that while it is true that acceptance of plans relies on judgments of certainty in issues of sustainability, uncertainty can come from social, institutional and economic as well as from ecological and biophysical uncertainty. It is likely that the human based uncertainties significantly exceed those of science, certainly in terms of developing water reform. This is particularly the case when intergenerational issues are at stake. Human tendencies to discount the future and moral obligations to those not close to their interests are universal. Thus even when considering future generations self motivated judgments of what is fair are likely. Nevertheless, some delegation to others (including the government) can be achieved when the ongoing procedural justice of decision making allows groups to activate trust and fairness based heuristics. These heuristics create a diminution of uncertainty in relation to complex issues such as water allocation. How uncertainty could be managed through collaborative planning is discussed. Without attention to these basic human uncertainties the conflict observed in relation to Australian water plans is likely to continue with likely negative outcomes to all concerned.

Is manipulative intent necessary to mitigate the eyewitness post-identification feedback effect?

Feedback suggestive of mistaken eyewitnesses claiming that they identified the correct person leads to distorted retrospective judgments of certainty, view, and other testimony-relevant measures. This feedback effect can be significantly mitigated if witnesses later learn that the feedback source did not know which lineup member was the correct person and had a manipulative intent (post-feedback suspicion manipulation). We replicated the post-feedback suspicion effect and used a mistake condition showing that the manipulative intent is not a necessary component, thereby ruling out reactance-type interpretations of the post-feedback suspicion effect. Some conditions included instructions to ensure relevant processing of the feedback before the post-feedback suspicion manipulations, but these processing instructions did not mitigate the effect. The results suggest that these retrospective judgments (e.g., certainty, attention, view) remain malleable as new information unfolds.

Children's Judgments of Certainty and Uncertainty on a Problem Where the Possible Solutions Differ in Likelihood

In the present study, the authors adapted a task introduced by Piaget (1987) to assess children's appreciation of indeterminacy under conditions in which the possible solutions to a problem are not equally likely. The task involved identifying or predicting the number of chips that must be drawn from a box in order to determine its contents with certainty. Children 7 through 12 years old were presented with this task and with Pieraut-Le Bonniec's (1980) box task (a standard measure of the ability to distinguish determinate from indeterminate conditions). The tasks produced parallel developmental functions, although there was some indication that appreciating indeterminacy was easier on Piaget's problem than on the standard task. Information about likelihoods did not influence children's judgments of certainty and uncertainty. In general, recognizing that a problem is determinate precedes recognition of indeterminacy, which, in turn, precedes success at predicting the moves needed to establish certainty on a problem.